thirst
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: "Don't you dare chastise me as if I've only just begun an infatuation, as if these are the newly sprung, simple affections of some mortal fool. I have loved you longer than most Empires have dared to breathe, you know this." — Half Gods are worshiped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood. — AU Klaroline drabble series, Original!Caroline. Queen and her Queen Consort.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** An AU loosely (sometime tightly, idk how you like it) linked series of drabbles (frequently updated too) where Caroline is the Original!Vampire, and Klaus not so much lol. Inspired by the graphic made (by **hotbloodedhunter** on tumblr) about Caroline as Queen and Klaus as her Queen consort which really got my mind whirring because it was seriously so beautiful. Its caption was; "Half Gods are worshiped in _wine_ and_ flowers._ Real gods require _**bloo****d**_. " Please go check it out, it's so beautiful. You can find it on my Author's page in a link. It gave me so many feels during a particularly unbearable Klaroline drought.

Basically, this is rather experimental, and rather done musingly. There's no pressure when it comes to updating/reading this fic, just lazily check in on it once in a while and hum noncommittally to yourself as you do. I'm just dabbling here.

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Half Gods are worshiped in _wine_ and_ flowers._ Real gods require _**blood**_.

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Her family told her she was flirting with death, to take him on. It was foolery. _There is disobedience and mischief in every singular line of him, Caroline._

She, diplomat and strategist - and he undiluted rage tempering his every move with violence. Could she truly think to safeguard any future when he was constantly putting it in harm's way?

Klaus follows her, to whichever hell she chooses. Brash and surly to anyone who might seek to take his place. Her mongrel, her wolf, a shadow that is torn dangerous and undecided between a desire to protect her and the need to smother her and posses her.

_I don't know how to love,_ he tells her once, wine compelling honesty, she tells herself. But he has only ever been honest with her, she can't pretend otherwise. _Not properly. Life's made me too vicious._

It had been both warning, and promise.

He takes to knee before her the way he will do for no one else, grabbing her hand and kissing her knuckles, with hunger enough to send even her reeling.

She feels the bruises of it to the bone.

"You're only a boy," She breathed once, cool and possessed on this altar she had clawed onto. She'd needed no one, then. She needs no one now. She'd done it all herself. Who does he think he is? To swear himself to her so readily?

It still stirs some hot, foreign excitement, blooming behind her ribs to know this dangerous knowledge. That her own family fears him, that only her hand can smother him, only her words can soothe him.

This man of fire held so delicately in her hand, so willingly. She almost forgets how it might burn her, like it burns her know - red, hot and wanting. Knowing that he would carve out this world, fashion it into a throne for her if she wished it. If she _bid._

She's old enough that these things shouldn't thrill her anymore, boys with smirks and sea-storm eyes, who promise her the world as if it is not already hers.

She is always cruel to him but he returns to her, always. Lays his helmet at her feet, hot iron shining wetly with blood, grit and sand from the beaches of Troy clinging to the metal like rust.

There's blood in his hair, ruddy against the gold of his curls, goring the gold of it. She'd always loved his hair, husks of yellow like wheat from the fields of Elysian - war hangs onto him like fever sweat, like his own skin, but his eyes are laid down almost reverently when he presses his temples against the nook of her knee, breathes hot as a prayer against her skin, in ways that makes it hard for her not to shiver. "Caroline," He swears. There is a thought on the tip of her tongue that feels as heavy as a weight dragging her down into the sea. Murderer mine.

She sends him countries away so he cannot burrow further, she needs time to still how her hands shake. Under her orders he travels, he dines with foreign dignitaries, playing at one himself, playing at diplomacy, forced to pretend that the thirst for her does not kill him, does not make him impatient or wrathful.

She is beginning to understand. See, she's thirsty too.

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**tbc.**


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I am completely and utterly overwhelmed by the craziness this little innocent drabble idea has inspired, and the beauty - oh dear, Hannah (**but seriously** on ffnet) made a graphic for this fic, and I have been left completely and utterly shattered in the wake of it. Not only did she do that, but in the space of the next few hours managed to get me ANOTHER manip on another fic of mine! After such a long day at school, Hannah's gifts are so wonderful, and so beautiful, and they really warmed my heart. She is not only a flawless writer and a talented manip-maker, but also a wonderful friend. So this one here's for Hannah. It's nothing much, but here it is! Updated as I promised! Oh, and both manips that I mentioned can be found on my profile page. Hannah is **highgaarden **on tumblr, check her out, she's one of those rare people you can only be so lucky to have the pleasure of knowing.

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Let them say this of Niklaus, that he was vindictive and cruel and never could another creature more vengeful be met on this earth. No creature more entitled, no one who reeked of violence more, that his teeth were whittled with wrath unquenched. That in him was the boldness of Alexander's fleet, and the starved pride of Troy. He would have moved for no man, but he moved for her.

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She meets him long before he meets her, "When you were nothing but a mewling babe," she admits years later, after she has denied his oath of fealty thrice over, and after she finally allows him within her ranks.

Flippant, she turns away from him. Klaus stands stock still, jaw hardening, awaiting orders. He knows the story.

"But it was not I who saved you - Stefan found you. It was Stefan who saw your body where you'd been left. So the next time you think to disobey either one of us, remember that you swore yourself to me. The next time you think to insult him," She cast him a look over her shoulder, the feminine toss of her head, all light, frothy blonde curls belied by how succinct a tone she takes, how cold and clear a stare. "Remember that it was my blood that nourished you, but it was he who plucked you from the ice."

Klaus does not bow his head, he's not tame enough for such things. The tendons of his shoulders, his neck, are tight with tension. A bare string holds him back from hissing exactly what he thinks about Stefan. Stefan with his insight, with his bold green eyes. Stefan who careened dangerously between stern, commanding frowns and a lilting laugh. Her right arm, her far flung arrow going where she would not, striking for her the enemy's heart with nary a thought for anything but efficiency. He _respected_ Stefan, he respected his courage, his fine honed mind for numbers and ambush. It was Stefan who came down the mountain with him in his arms, Stefan who gave him a cup of water tinged red and snapped his neck. Stefan who brought him a flask of blood that spun up the picture of a dewey eyed, dark haired girl Klaus had never met. It was Stefan who dug his fingers into his jaw and laughed, delighting at the feel of new fangs beneath his pushing thumb.

Stefan who told him, _you're a remarkable fighter, boy._

Stefan who patted him on the back, gave him even more than the same easy friendship he'd given the rest of the men.

Stefan though, who was not his equal. Who went away for years at a time to do her bidding. Stefan who she trusted implicitly. Stefan who came to them once every few decades, bearded and travel worn and grinning, and who Caroline allowed close to her chair still. Stefan who sometimes shook his head at what she said, who stood close to her to trace troop line on the maps, who could in meetings leans precariously near, have her ear, whisper his typical stern warnings, mouth close enough to kiss throat.

Caroline faces him then, even the turn of her light, elegant. All her unaffected beauty, her youth preserved and nourished by the sacrifices of others, and _oh, what he will sacrifice for her._

She must see it in his eyes, for she breaks the stare. Her eyelashes beat, the gold on her brow glimmers and she sounds a little unsteady when she speaks again. "...What has brought this on? I thought you were fast friends."

They are, fast friends. He and Stefan are like the fuse of skin on bone, the strange canvas of a burnt corpse. They are so alike, and yet so different in that she will trust Stefan more than she ever will him. Even now she looks like she would have more space between them. That she is vexed by him.

"You almost _killed_ each other today."

She had heard about the little tiff at the training grounds. Klaus can't help the grim lift of his mouth, and she looks at him, tortured that he can be so blase. It had started out friendly enough, men taunting each other before they fought, to get the spirit of the fight out, Klaus hadn't even been that angry at the time, it had been a _game_. But then...he'd pinned Stefan's throat to the ground, and it had seemed so..._convenient._ Next thing he knew was a summons to her hall, but never to her chambers, she knows enough. "Impulse got the best of me."

The queenly airs evaporate and Caroline trembles before him, furious. Close enough to lunge (for she is clever enough to know when to attack him, if not put him down. She doesn't have hard enough heart for that), yet far enough that she won't touch him, or invite him to touch her. She's woman enough to remember _that_.

"Impulse always gets the best of you!" She grinds out, harsh and condemning. Disbelieving too, from the wide stare, the way she breathes through her teeth. She looks as if she is ready to wash her hands of him. Her eyes grew brighter, her cheeks flush. He swims in it like a demon in a fire, it warms him deeper than sinew, to see the pretty softness of her turn wrathful, her hurt ready to be overcome by her anger. A breath away from feral, from that viciousness that is too freeing to allow herself. That blood-drunk, unbinding of the sense where she need not feel recompense for having such sharp teeth, where she might not be ashamed to show them. Not to him. That she is held back by a bare strain like him, from lunging too. "Have you ever stopped to consider the consequences of your actions? Must you be so bitter? Do you know nothing else but to indulge every animal instinct, every base and selfish _whim_?"

In the end she'd taken him on because she'd foolishly believed he'd be less dangerous that way. Or at least that if she could employ him, secure him, she might give _direction_ to his fierce anger. That a leashed wolf is better than one wild and roaming free. That it would be alright, even if he turned his head around and sank his teeth into the hand that held the reigns.

It is not better though, to keep any thing such as a wolf so close. It is a better thing to snap its neck. It is the _wisest_ thing.

"Do you know then," Klaus speaks. "what I deny myself now?"

It is a brazen thing to say. It is a little slaughter in this pristine white hall, blood on her white samite gown, a red splatter on her beautiful collarbones.

Caroline does not breathe. She does not dare in the face of such a proclamation, not even to tell him he assumes too much. He has no _shame_, she _knows_ this already, she should have remembered quicker. It does not matter how close but not-close-enough-to-kiss she's placed herself from him, and it has _never _mattered how close she might need to stand so she might lunge, Caroline never would - it has never _mattered._ For his affirmations have always been in his eyes, like natural, vindictive wrath, the froth and boiling oceans of a sea serpent's plunge into deeper hells.

He does not need to tear the dress off her body to make her feel utterly naked, utterly vulnerable, as if she is that white lamb on an alter of the magic that started her, young and bare.

It is a little murder. A little child he's wrung the neck of, to hold her eyes after he has done it, as if to challenge whatever offense she might think herself at rights to feel. _There are no rights here_, his body says, held taut, waiting to react should she give him anything - _anything_, no matter how mere the indication. Some steely defiance that not even she, millennium old royal, can bend. _There is only you and I, and how little I care for the heads I might lay before you - how I only care for you. Will you punish me for it?_

_If you want to smite me, then smite me._

Her mouth runs dry, the air in her lungs goes tight and heady, and he has no doubt that if did move forward, that he might swallow her whole. And Caroline... she would not raise a hand to stop him. That is too easy, too simple. He does not want a victory like that, some brief and luckily won triumph. She is very old, but he matches her age with his boldness, her hesitation with his fearlessness. It is she who cannot die, but he who charges as if he might live forever. Caroline regards him like a steel trap, some bitter decadence she must not indulge, but Klaus knows _everything_. He can be wise, he can be _patient_ too.

"You should excuse me," It comes out of him a little hoarse, a little gruff. Firm though, for he moves away. He has his limits. He swears he will feel the jasmine blooming in his chest as he sleeps, the scent dabbed on the throat he must never touch. He must never reach first, he must never be the one to lunge. It isn't worth anything if it's him, if he's the one to breach the distance, to puncture the heart of the matter. It is not enough to take and be _allowed_.

He bows his head, but does not take to knee. She does not say a word, does not contest his leaving, hiss that she has not dismissed him, that he is being impudent and disobedient. It is his useless mercy, leaving after the damage has already been done.

She stands very still in the same place, long after he goes.

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**tbc**


End file.
